A gardener's dream retreat high above the Hudson in Upper Grandview

Apr. 27, 2012

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The fully equipped outdoor kitchen at the home of Linda and Jonathan Ewig gets quite a workout on summer weekends. / Tania Savayan / The Journal News

See the garden

As part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program, the Ewigs will open their showpiece of a garden to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on June 24, along with three other Rockland gardens. The $5 entrance fee per garden goes to the conservancy’s nationwide garden preservation efforts. For more information, visit www.gardenconservancy.org/opendays or call 888-842-2442.

Resource List

The flowers: Linda Ewig likes to pick and choose from local nurseries and flower shops. A few of her favorites: Arbor Hill Garden Center, 680 Main St., Sparkill, 845-359-8884. Ned Kelly & Company, 458 Piermont Ave., Piermont, 845-359-4480, www.nedkellyandco.com Aubry Flowers, 510 Piermont Ave., Piermont, 845-359-1411, www.aubreyflowers.comMetropolitan Plant and Flower Exchange, 2125 Fletcher Ave., Fort Lee, N.J., 800-638-7613, www.metroplant exchange.com D’Ercole Farm and Garden Center, 518 Tappan Road, Norwood, N.J., 210-768-0495 And Linda’s secret tip? “I go to the grocery store and find out what’s looking good and then dress them up with greenery from my garden.” The pool: The gorgeous pool was built by Cool Pool and Spa, 85 S. Pascack Road, Nanuet. Matt Horn, who owns Matterhorn Nursery in New Hempstead with his wife, Ronnie, did all of the landscape design around the pool and throughout the property. For more information, contact Ronnie Horn at 845-222-4312 or ronnie@matterhornnursery.com. The food: On weekends, Linda and Jonathan Ewig love to host big family dinners. They pick up lots of stuff in the city, but they also like to shop at Old World Food Market, 40 Route 59 in Nyack (www.oldworldfood market.com) and DeCicco’s at 180 S. Main St. in New City (www.deciccos. com). Best of all, they are doubling the size of their vegetable garden this year, and Linda has already planted spinach, six kinds of lettuce and lots of herbs. They also grow carrots, bell and hot peppers, broccoli, and Swiss chard.

Online: Find 30 more photographs of the property and the grounds.

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Once the calendar turns to May, Linda Ewig and her husband, Jonathan, pretty much abandon their French chateau-style house in Upper Grandview and move outdoors into their gorgeous garden.

Well, who wouldn’t? Along with the expected undulating beds of every imaginable shrub and perennial, their “garden” boasts a gloriously inviting 50-by-20-foot swimming pool with a separate spa pool, acres of emerald-green lawn for boccie, baseball and croquet, majestic stone walkways and patios lighted by sentry lanterns on tall posts, a fully loaded and covered outdoor kitchen and dining area with a separate barbecue station.

The Ewigs’ home and garden sit at the end of a very long private driveway, at the very top of Upper Grandview. The views up here are simply astounding. The Hudson River fills the whole horizon and the Piermont waterfront sits at your feet — don’t look down too fast or you’ll get dizzy. The Tappan Zee Bridge unfolds to the north and you can even see all the way down the river to Manhattan on a clear day.

“On the Fourth of July, you can see all the fireworks up and down the river,” Linda says. “It goes on for hours.”

Summer sunsets are particularly wonderful in the garden, she says. “I love to just sit here on the patio and watch the sunsets — maybe have a glass of wine, and sit with my mother, my husband, my kids if they’re around.”

“The sky over there turns orangey,” she adds, pointing toward Manhattan, “and then it’s pink over that way, toward the Tappan Zee Bridge.”

On cool nights, they head for the garden folly, a small brick and limestone structure that’s made to look like an old English-style ruin, and light a fire to keep warm.

The masterful design of the garden and grounds was done by Matt Horn, the owner of Matterhorn Nursery in New Hempstead, which closed its retail operation earlier this month but will continue its landscape design and garden maintenance business. “The project was done over a few years by the Matterhorn team, including landscape, carpentry, the outdoor kitchen, stonework and irrigation,” says Ronnie Horn, Matt’s wife. “We did not use any subcontractors.”

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Matterhorn received two national awards for the Ewig landscape upon its completion in 2004: the Landscape Design Award from the Perennial Plant Association and the Environmental Improvement Award from the Association of Landscape Contractors of America.

Everyone knows Horn as a great plantsman, but here you get to see his talents as an artist and landscape architect who had the vision to pull everything together — so that it’s as comfortable as it is grand.

And it’s very much the Ewigs’ garden. “We were intimately involved in the design and picking the plants,” Linda says. “My husband, too — he loves flowers, loves to photograph them.”

And oh what plants. In summer, you’ll see huge bright-yellow swaths of black-eyed Susans, blue-purple ribbons of Russian sage, butterfly bushes with velvety purple blooms and lots and lots of roses — mostly crimson, with a few pink ones dotting the beds here and there. Giant rhododendrons hug the house, and stands of ornamental grasses beckon in every direction.

Hydrangeas, spruces and Japanese maples earn their keep in every season, and the plants right near the pool have a more tropical flavor. Tall oak trees add grace notes and a sense of timelessness.

The dreamy outdoor kitchen really gets a workout in warm weather, especially on summer Sundays. “Oh my God, we’re crazy for cooking!” Linda exclaims. “We barbecue all the time in the summer — we all love to cook.”

Two of their four adult children live in Manhattan, and they often come up on Sundays to enjoy — and help prepare — a family feast.

That kitchen, by the way, is a gourmet cook’s dream, with a refrigerator, wine cooler, icemaker, two-burner cooktop, trash compactor, even a dishwasher (how cool is that?). In winter, it all gets pulled out and stored indoors.

The wildlife up here is wonderful, too — well, except for the deer and the groundhogs that occasionally wreak havoc in the garden.

“We see bald eagles occasionally,” Linda says. “They fly right by here, right at eye level.” Peregrine falcons, too, along with giant pileated woodpeckers and foxes. And coyotes — “we see tracks every night, right up to the door.”

In summer, butterflies seem to be everywhere.

“It’s just a nice place to be,” Linda says. “The view is unbelievable, and there’s a breeze up here when there’s not one anywhere else. And no bugs — probably because of the breeze.”

Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it? It’s a good thing summer will be here before we know it.